#families and homes are the glue of every single culture in world history

[15-lizards]

need more Dothraki headcannons. Just anything about them. I’m so into them. Imagine if they bearded sheep and had milk and yogurt and wool.

Expanding on Dothraki culture is quickly becoming my favorite pastime

I looooove yurts yurts are my best friend in the whole wide world. Spacious enough to be comfortable in during the long periods of stagnation, but easy to pack up and move when needed. Animal skins keep the interior cool or warm depending on the season, and rugs and wall hangings give the place extra insulation and color. Also houses, especially in nomadic, being a center of community and companionship is soooo great to me and a way to expand on Dothraki culture. They aren’t constantly aggressive and hostile to everyone they have friends they have family they love others they are human!!! Their homes are places of comfort where they share drink and food and raise their children and go back to their families to visit!! And the home is also a place for women to dominate when they are in a patriarchal culture. Grandmothers bounce toddlers on their lap while they weave and pass down stories. Girls close the tent flaps and treat their younger sisters who are going through the woes of their first blood. Women exchange secrets and have their own world apart from the men, it is their space. The home is so important!!

We don’t hear much ab Dothraki children, but in every culture, children are important and are loved! I hate when stories make children out to be some sort of nuisance for the surrounding adults and are always treated like unloved annoyances who aren’t useful enough for anything yet. In the Mongolian culture which the Dothraki are inspired by, children are seen as the most vulnerable population and are protected fiercely, being given non names to confuse spirits and receiving blessings before leaving the home at night to protect them from harm. Mothers work hard on their winter clothing so they won’t get sick. Uncles and elder brothers will teach them how to ride horses and shoot their arrows and swing their Arakhs. Their fathers cheer them on when they play their games and race their horses. They have to work and learn responsibility earlier than most people, but they’re still allowed the space to be children, and they are still loved for what they are. And that love doesn’t go away the family unit is always important in every single culture ever!!!

[adevotedappraisal]

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it.  I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them.  They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by.  Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house.  Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do.  They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.  

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment.  You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes.  We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said.  But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive.  That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman.  I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me.  They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick).  Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.  

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country.  So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection.  From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her.  Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through.  Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time.  In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in.  That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001). 

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well.  While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track.  In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes.  Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.  With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures.  The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel.   Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.”   At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.”  All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an  I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album.  Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of “Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).  

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks.  Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window.  And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene.  Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two.  She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh.  Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before.  There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.  

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love.  That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air.  A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.  

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster.  And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”  

It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see.  In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again.  And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

[thecourtneychronicles]

“Courtney Act says she’s enjoying an endless “hot girl summer”. Which, for those not initiated into American rap memes, basically means she’s having a damn good time.

“I’m kind of lubed up and ready for Mardi Gras, so to speak,” she says. As Australia’s most famous drag queen, active since the turn of the century, Courtney helped lead the mainstreaming of queer culture in this country along with figures such as Carlotta and Bob Downe.

But being a leader or pioneer doesn’t guarantee being comfortable in your own skin. Courtney says that until recently her understanding of sexuality and gender was actually quite limited. When she was performing, she was a woman, but when she stripped off her make-up, she went back to being Shane Jenek, a man.

“Although I did drag, my masculinity and femininity were compartmentalised in the binary,” Courtney says.

But over the past few years, as public discussion of gender, sexuality and identity has grown, she has discovered things are more complex than your genitals, clothes and hair.

“I think sometimes people think identity has something to do with the wrapping, but really it’s the gift underneath,” she says. “It’s about how you feel. For me, I definitely feel like I occupy masculine and feminine qualities.”

Courtney explores this journey in her pop-cabaret show, Fluid, showing this week at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival. It’s a change of pace for her after focusing on television in recent years; first by winning Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, then as the runner-up (with Joshua Keefe) on last year’s Australian Dancing with the Stars.

It’s also a far cry from her humble beginnings in the DIY world of drag, which has never been regarded as high art but remains a staple of gay bars and culture worldwide.

“There’s a lot less hot glue and sticky tape in this show, which makes it feel a lot more professional,” Courtney says of Fluid. “I don’t know if that will hold until opening night.”

Set to original music, Fluid was written by Shane and American comedian Brad Loekle. For the most part it’s a one-woman show, with some help from a ballroom dancer in the second half. (“It’d be weird doing a ballroom dance by yourself,” she says.)

The show acknowledges that, more than ever, people are being flooded with “ever-changing and flowing ideas of who we are, what we are and what we might become”.

This is something we should embrace, says Courtney. “We change our clothes every day – we change  our hairstyles, we change our jobs. Everything is constantly in motion and constantly fluid. But we have this idea that our identities are fixed. When we look at our lives they’re actually a lot more fluid than we think.”

Courtney, or Shane, doesn’t identify as trans but has said that seeing more transgender people represented in the media was liberating and allowed her to explore her own doubts about gender. She’s previously been described as “gender fluid, pansexual and polyamorous”, although she no longer embraces those labels as she once did.

“They all work,” says Courtney, who prefers to identify as “just generally queer” these days. “It’s funny … so many of our groups identify so strongly with labels and they’re so important to us. I kind of feel less attached to those labels.”

She also understands why some people might feel confused, or even confronted, by the politics of queer identification. The acronym LGBTQIA+, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and others, has expanded over the years to the point that some critics deride it as “alphabet soup”. Even those who are part of the community can be intolerant.

“I get that LGBTIQA+ is a little cumbersome from a marketing standpoint,” says Courtney. “But if you find yourself with the time to complain and be confused by a few extra letters, then you’re one of the lucky ones. If there are people that get to understand themselves more because of a letter in an acronym, I’m all for it.”

“I definitely feel like I occupy masculine and feminine qualities.”

Courtney casts a sceptical eye over everything, including the rise of cancel culture, a predominantly left-wing phenomenon which argues that anyone who says or does something deemed to be racist, sexist, homophobic or in any way offensive should be called out, shamed and, preferably, silenced.

Lamenting the state of political discourse while appearing on the ABC’s Matter of Fact program last year, she said: “The volume’s too loud now and everybody’s yelling.” While history showed that people sometimes need to raise their voices, “when you actually sit down opposite someone and have a conversation with them, you get so much further”.

How, then, does Courtney view the debate over religious freedom that has raged ever since Australians voted to legalise same-sex marriage in 2017? She says it’s clear that sometimes people, especially older white males, perceive other people gaining rights as a threat to their own. She says religion can be a lost cause because it is, by definition, about faith rather than rational argument. Still, queer people have to make the effort to engage.

“The way to do that is to get people to picture themselves in other people’s experiences. That’s the only way you can foster that empathy.

“Rather than yelling aggressively back at the people trying to oppress us, I think the most important thing to do is to share our stories.”

Another thing you can do, of course, is march. This weekend, Mardi Gras culminates in the annual parade up Oxford Street, which will feature more than 200 floats and 10,000 marchers. For the first time, Courtney will co-host the coverage on SBS with comedians Joel Creasey and Zoe Coombs Marr, and Studio 10 presenter Narelda Jacobs.

She had something of a practice run hosting the coverage on Foxtel some years ago. “I saw a clip of it the other day,” she says. “And I’m definitely hoping to redeem myself.”

As a character, Courtney has been on the gay scene for about 20 years. The person behind the facade, Shane, turned 38 last week. He grew up in Brisbane and remembers watching the parade on television as a teenager in the 1990s, huddled up close to the TV so he could quickly switch it off if his parents came downstairs.

Shane came to Sydney when he was 18 and attended his first Mardi Gras. “I just remember it was such a melting pot of people,” he says. “It was the first time I really understood what a community was: that there were all these different parts, and we all faced different challenges and struggles.”

But even then, Shane says he failed to really comprehend about what Mardi Gras was all about. Just like many heterosexual critics over the years, as a young man he gawked at the giant dancing penises, fetish-wear and nudity and wondered: why?

“I remember thinking: why can’t they just be normal?” Shane says. “Have your parade, but why does it have to be about sex and penises? Because I had shame about all of those things. I realise now that the parade’s brash display of sexuality liberates the shame … it’s a really radical way to shake people and say there’s nothing wrong with sexuality – not just homosexuality but sexuality in general.”

The queer community has given Shane a lot: acceptance, identity, a career and fame. It has taken him to Los Angeles, where he was based for some years until 2018, and now to his new home in London.

Love, on the other hand, remains elusive. He is “on the rebound” at the moment, though eternally optimistic. “It’s Mardi Gras time, it’s summer in Sydney, I think this is the perfect time to be single. Maybe I’ll find love under a disco ball at the after-party.”

Incredibly, at 38, Shane is about to attend his first ever wedding, straight or gay – his friend Tim is marrying his partner Ben. It is set to be a baptism of fire. “They have asked my ex-boyfriend and me to give the best man’s speech together, which could be slightly sadistic,” he says.

Shane is still adjusting to the relatively new world of same-sex marriage. It’s not for everyone – many queers still think of it as a conservative and unnecessary institution – but it’s growing on him. “Weirdly, seeing all these people get married, I feel like my cold heart has melted a bit,” he says. “I think there’s something really beautiful about marriage.”

It’s a reminder of why events like the Mardi Gras are still so important – a celebration of diversity at the same time as the old divisions between straight and gay are knocked down. As well as marriage, this can manifest in small shifts, like the politics of Bondi Beach.

“I was at North Bondi on Saturday [and] it was surprisingly unlike North Bondi,” Shane says. “It was all families and those banana umbrella things. I was like, ‘Oh, I remember when this used to be [gay nightclub] ARQ, but with more light.’"

“I guess that’s the progress we fought for – the families are happy occupying the gay beaches now.”

Fashion director Penny McCarthy. Photographer Steven Chee. Hair Benjamin Moir at Wigs By Vanity.

SBS’s Mardi Gras broadcast airs live from 7.30pm on February 29. Fluid will return for a tour of Australia and NZ in spring.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale February 23.”

Courtney’s interview for The Sydney Morning Herald - February 21, 2020

[pope-francis-quotes]

25th August >> (@zenitenglish) #Popefrancis #Pope Pope Francis’  Address to Irish Authorities, Diplomatic Corps.

‘With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education’

Below is the Vatican provided text of Pope Francis’ address to Irish authorities and the diplomatic corps this morning in Dublin:

***

Taoiseach, Members of Government and of the Diplomatic Corps, Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the beginning of my visit to Ireland, I am grateful for the invitation to address this distinguished assembly representing the civil, cultural and religious life of the country, together with the members of the diplomatic corps and guests. I appreciate the friendly welcome I have received from the President of Ireland, which reflects the tradition of cordial hospitality for which the Irish are known throughout the world. I likewise appreciate the presence of a delegation from Northern Ireland.

As you know, the reason for my visit is to take part in the World Meeting of Families, held this year in Dublin. The Church is, in a real way, a family among families, and senses the need to support families in their efforts to respond faithfully and joyfully to their God-given vocation in society. The Meeting is not only an opportunity for families to reaffirm their commitment to loving fidelity, mutual assistance and reverence for God’s gift of life in all its forms, but also to testify to the unique role played by the family in the education of its members and the development of a sound and flourishing social fabric.

I would like to see the World Meeting of Families as a prophetic witness to the rich patrimony of ethical and spiritual values that it is the duty of every generation to cherish and protect. One need not be a prophet to perceive the difficulties faced by our families in today’s rapidly evolving society, or to be troubled by the effects that breakdown in marriage and family life will necessarily entail for the future of our communities at every level. Families are the glue of society; their welfare cannot be taken for granted, but must be promoted and protected by every appropriate means.

It was in the family that each of us took his or her first steps in life. There we learned to live together in harmony, to master our selfish instincts and reconcile our differences, and above all to discern and seek those values that give authentic meaning and fulfilment to our lives. If we speak of our entire world as a single family, it is because we rightly acknowledge the bonds of our common humanity and we sense our call to unity and solidarity, especially with the weakest of our brothers and sisters. Yet all too often, we feel impotent before the persistent evils of racial and ethnic hatred, intractable conflicts and violence, contempt for human dignity and for fundamental human rights, and the growing divide between rich and poor. How much we need to recover, in every instance of political and social life, the sense of being a true family of peoples! And never to lose hope or the courage to persevere in the moral imperative to be peacemakers, reconcilers and guardians of one another.

Here in Ireland, this challenge has a special resonance, in light of the long conflict that separated brothers and sisters of a single family. Twenty years ago, the international community followed attentively the events in Northern Ireland that led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The Irish government, in union with the political, religious and civil leaders of Northern Ireland and the British government, and with the support of other world leaders, created a dynamic context for the peaceful settlement of a conflict that had caused untold pain on both sides. We can give thanks for the two decades of peace that followed this historic agreement, while expressing firm hope that the peace process will overcome every remaining obstacle and help give birth to a future of harmony, reconciliation and mutual trust.

The Gospel reminds us that true peace is ultimately God’s gift; it flows from a healed and reconciled heart and branches out to embrace the entire world. Yet it also requires constant conversion on our part, as the source of those spiritual resources needed to build a society of authentic solidarity, justice and service of the common good. Without that spiritual foundation, our ideal of a global family of nations risks becoming no more than another empty platitude. Can we say that the goal of creating economic prosperity leads of itself to a more just and equitable social order? Or could it be that the growth of a materialistic “throwaway culture” has in fact made us increasingly indifferent to the poor and to the most defenceless members of our human family, including the unborn, deprived of the very right to life? Perhaps the most disturbing challenges to our consciences in these days is the massive refugee crisis, which will not go away, and whose solution calls for a wisdom, a breadth of vision and a humanitarian concern that go far beyond short-term political decisions.

I am very conscious of the circumstances of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters – I think especially of those women who in the past have endured particularly difficult situations. With regard to the most vulnerable, I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the Church charged with responsibility for their protection and education. The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments. My predecessor, Pope Benedict, spared no words in recognizing both the gravity of the situation and in demanding that “truly evangelical, just and effective” measures be taken in response to this betrayal of trust (cf. Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, 10). His frank and decisive intervention continues to serve as an incentive for the efforts of the Church’s leadership both to remedy past mistakes and to adopt stringent norms meant to ensure that they do not happen again.

Each child is in fact a precious gift of God, to be cherished, encouraged to develop his or her gifts, and guided to spiritual maturity and human flourishing. The Church in Ireland, past and present, has played a role in promoting the welfare of children that cannot be obscured. It is my hope that the gravity of the abuse scandals, which have cast light on the failings of many, will serve to emphasize the importance of the protection of minors and vulnerable adults on the part of society as a whole. In this regard, all of us are aware of how urgent it is to provide our young people with wise guidance and sound values on their journey to maturity.

Dear friends,

Almost ninety years ago, the Holy See was among the first international institutions to recognize the Irish Free State. That initiative signalled the beginning of many years of dynamic cooperation and harmony, with only an occasional cloud on the horizon. Recently intensive endeavour and goodwill on both sides have contributed significantly to a promising renewal of those friendly relations for the mutual benefit of all.

The threads of that history reach back to over a millennium and a half ago, when the Christian message, preached by Palladius and Patrick, found a home in Ireland and became an integral part of Irish life and culture. Many “saints and scholars” were inspired to leave these shores and bring their newfound faith to other lands. To this day, the names of Columba, Columbanus, Brigid, Gall, Killian, Brendan and so many others are still revered throughout Europe and beyond. On this island monasticism, as a source of civilization and artistic creativity, wrote a splendid page in Irish and universal history.

Today as in the past, the men and women who live in this country strive to enrich the life of the nation with the wisdom born of their faith. Even in Ireland’s darkest hours, they found in that faith a source of the courage and commitment needed to forge a future of freedom and dignity, justice and solidarity. The Christian message has been an integral part of that experience, and has shaped the language, thought and culture of people on this island.

It is my prayer that Ireland, in listening to the polyphony of contemporary political and social discussion, will not be forgetful of the powerful strains of the Christian message that have sustained it in the past, and can continue to do so in the future.

With these thoughts, I cordially invoke upon you, and upon all the beloved Irish people, God’s blessings of wisdom, joy and peace. Thank you.

[Vatican-provided text of Pope’s prepared speech]© Libreria Editrice VaticanaAUGUST 25, 2018 14:32

PAPAL TRIPS

[folkstudies]

College Personalities Masterpost

[This is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, and I get that everyone will have a different opinion. No offense intended!]

***

Universities

Harvard: The Stanford of the East. They go to Harvard, sweaty :))), and will make sure you know it. Senator’s sons: brash, smart, and never loved enough as children. Marxists who will graduate only to become CEOs. High School Salutatorians.

Yale: Power gays and hyperfocused law students. Secret societies, a housing system like Hogwarts’s, and a fistful of adderall in every pocket. High School Valedictorians.

Dartmouth: Frat guys, athletic stoners, and upper middle class mountaineers. Imagine a Penn student who spends their summer semester at Brown, vaping their way through business school.

Penn: Future opioid abusing bankers, who party hard but have enough connections to compensate for their academic performance. Like Dartmouth but not as chill; like Princeton but not as prissy.

Brown: They would have went to Berkeley, but Mother insisted on an Ivy. Blue hair, red flannel, white skin. They’ve got universal pass fail but it’s taboo to take advantage of the system. The creative version of every subject–their CompSci students go to Pixar and their Biomed students go to Calico.

Cornell: Engineers from old money families and Conrad Hilton fanboys. Are they depressed because they live in Ithaca or because of their crushing workloads? Teenage Kurt Vonneguts. Wealthy, but it’s not always obvious.

Columbia: In a one sided dick measuring contest with Yale. Heavy workloads, heavy drinking. Erudite, ambitious (and they know it). The angel to NYU’s devil. A fast track to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Princeton: Secretly thinks Harvard is for the impoverished. Eating clubs. Well developed Econ and Math departments, but UChicago is catching up. Great undergraduate teaching, especially if you fit in with the culture.

Stanford: They’d have gone to Harvard, but California is the closest thing Earth’s got to Eden and Massachusetts is…clammy. Massive startup culture. Duck syndrome and stress culture. Elitist, especially about class and status, but somehow gets a pass.

Caltech: “Hey MIT, we’re you but stronger.” Pretends that test scores trump all other metrics of success, because they’re *Number One at the SAT, baby.* Something of a male dominated culture, lighthearted.

MIT: Robotics, engineering, business, and math. 90s computer nerd aesthetic but in an ironic way. Sunlight averse. 1) study hard 2) ??? 3) profit

Duke: Beautifully gothic. Has successfully implemented a caste system, albeit informally. Intelligent, southern socialites. United by basketball, divided by highschool-esque cliques.

UChicago: Will fight the Ivies on sight. Very good at Econ and Law with an intense classical “core” curriculum. Have your weekly panic attack in a stunning glass egg-inspired library. “If you study hard enough you can become God.”

Vanderbilt: The scent of Tennessee honey in the trees. Frat culture. Los Angeles’s beauty standards, Mississippi’s snark.

Johns Hopkins: Students are required to duel you if you call it “John Hopkin’s.” People who have been premed since third grade. Academically intense without being prestige obsessed–I’d cautiously call it “well balanced.” They’re there to become doctors and medical researchers, period.

Berkeley: Study while a riot between Trump Supporters and Antifa rages outside. If Calculus III has you down and depressed, pick up a can of mace and assault somebody. Competes with Stanford, is the champion of Public Universities. Insanely expensive area to live in. Most students are too absorbed in their academics (read: 3.3 GPA CompSci qualifier) to worry about much else.

UMich: Berkeley but with snow. Ann Arbor is as good as college towns get, but has almost dangerous levels of school spirit. International students with $4k apartments and $850 winter coats. “Harvard waitlisted me but I’m not even mad.”

UCLA: Everyone is a former premed. Valley girls and the Asian students they make problematic comments about. Frat guys lost in a scary world where you can’t pass a midterm with a hangover. Cal’s politically stable cousin.

USC: “The University of Spoiled Children” still rings true sometimes, but not as much anymore. There are some seriously competitive academic programs hidden behind Los Angeles’s gauzy party culture. Loyal alumni.

WUSTL: Cooperative with a competitive biology program. Low school spirit, largely because their last star athlete graduated in 1943. Prominent STEM culture, but not exactly nerdy. A midwestern fusion of Brown and Columbia.

Carnegie Mellon: UPitt’s smaller, bourgeois sister. Cliquey nerds–a Drama student would rather die than speak with an Engineer, and visa versa. CompSci champions.

Northwestern: Nerdwestern and Northwasted. They went to private high schools and it’s obvious. Show up to your Art History final drunk on rosé. A version of UChicago where you won’t get mugged on campus.

UWash: Architecture designed by Athena herself. The premed children of Microsoft engineers. White boys wearing colored socks and Nike sandals. Washington rains endlessly with the tears of tormented Amazon employees.

Rice: A refreshing dose of New England in the depths of Texas. “Hmm, Rice? I’ve never heard of it!” Spanish architecture, conquistador vibes. You’ve got a fair chance of finding the library packed at 1am, depending on what week it is. The MIT of the South.

Penn State: Drinking school with a football problem. Parties harder than Miami U. Not really bothered that they get confused with UPenn. Mild frat culture.

Boston University: Rich girls and self centered frat bros. Hipsters and hipster engineers. Athletes in the CGS (“Crayons, Glue, and Scissors”) school. Wealthy slackers who will regale you with tales of Martha’s Vineyard over break.

UVA: Preppy but not on purpose. Public school snobs. Southern-ish and definitely conservative. DC kids with a seemingly endless flow of money from home. The wealthiest, whitest school that’s not called Harvard.

LACs

Williams: Oxford and Harvard’s laid back son. Amherst can suck a dick. The bourgeois version of outdoorsy. Sports culture despite not being in a major division.

Amherst: Prelaw or business. Pastel polos, party drugs, and a general Gilded Age aesthetic. General distaste for the hoi polloi.

Swarthmore: “Swatkward.” Highly academic atmosphere, no time for social skills. Beautiful leafy campus. UPenn students aren’t shit compared to us. Stress culture so intense it would make a UChicago student weep.

Tufts: Don’t ask us if we got denied at the Ivies. Friendly, midsize school that maintains the atmosphere of an LAC. Very good International Relations and Philosophy (Dr. Daniel Dennett!) programs.

Reed: Swarthmore but with a lot of LSD. Atheism, communism, and free love. No one here knows a goddamn thing about sex ed. Nuclear reactor that students can train to work at.

Grinnell: Brown’s midwestern cousin. Concrete, glass, and corn. Well developed STEM programs, especially for an LAC. Close knit community, extreme hookup culture. Quirky. Emphasis on writing skill. Gigantic per-student endowment.

Carleton: Trimester system that intensifies the academic culture. Cold winters, warm hearts. Parties more than a typical LAC but there’s still a sense of awkwardness. The smart version of eccentric. Mini Northwestern.

Bowdoin: Not a single person here has ever known a moment of hardship. Dining hall food that could earn a Michelin star. Rich, white, and cliquey. A pretty significant “old sport” culture. Everyone pays full tuition.

Pomona: Like a university packaged as an LAC. All the benefits of California, located next to the Greatest American City—Los Angeles. Large endowment, lots of opportunities. Flagship of the Claremont colleges. Mini Stanford.

Harvey Mudd: A tiny population of quirky engineers. The one true STEM LAC. Mini MIT. Male dominated, socially awkward, highly academic.

Middlebury: Bourgeoisie teenagers in the wilderness. Has a reputation for excellent language programs despite that fame stemming largely from summer specific programs. Quirky, in a reserved way. An amalgam of Dartmouth and Columbia.

Oberlin: What conservatives think liberals are like. A dot of blue in a sea of red. Theatre, music, and dance. “My parents are making me double major in Econ.”

[lifebydesign66]

White Supremacy Culture

TAKING IT PERSONAL: WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE

As a queer-identified, able-bodied and cisgendered woman with class and race privilege, I strive to prioritize naming how social locations shape the ways we move and show up in our lives. I believe those of us with privilege(s) are presented with opportunities to examine our values and actions with honesty, humility and openness. My hope with this imperfect piece is to enliven anti-racist study and exploration. Focusing on racial formation and white supremacy culture in this writing is intentional, however, is not meant to downplay or discount the role of intersecting categories of gender, sexual orientation, ability, nationality/immigration status, age, class or religion. In upcoming pieces, I will discuss interlocking systems of privilege and oppression, the origins of identity politics and delve deeper into white supremacy culture.

DEFINING TERMS

White supremacy culture is the idea (ideology) that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

White supremacy culture is an artificial, historically constructed culture which expresses, justifies and binds together the United States white supremacy system. It is the glue that binds together white-controlled institutions into systems and white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system. [from Sharon Martinas and the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop] (1)

UNEARTHING MY PRIVILEGE

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a psychotherapist. As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved dinosaurs. The movie Jurassic Park came out in 1993, but I am almost positive I knew the word “paleontologist” before then. I remember sitting in a ditch, filling a small plastic tube--the ones used to hold a single rose--with dirt. I grew up going to museums, zoos and libraries. I saw people who looked like me, white and sometimes women, in positions of authority, which gave me a sense of choice and possibility. My life reflected the race, class, citizenship and gender-conforming privileges of my family, privileges with violent histories.

MY UNSPOKEN QUESTIONS ABOUT PRIVILEGE

As a child, messages about cultural acceptance were confusing at best. My Southern California elementary school had a “Multicultural Day” every year where we learned about celebrations and food from around the world. At the same time, I didn’t understand why people around me were so angry when families came to the United States from Mexico. Many of my classmates were from Mexico and Latin America. There were palpable rifts in the process of making friends. There were also moments of possibility. I remember proudly singing songs in Spanish, dressed up as a fairy in a musical production of “Hansel and Gretel.” Something changed in my fourth grade year when suddenly we weren’t speaking Spanish anymore at school. Instead, we focused on glorifying the genocidal California Mission system. Nationalism, racism and xenophobia prevailed and the rift became an abyss. As I look back, there were moments when a part of me felt uneasy and had questions about the messages I heard from the media, from family members and at school about my classmates and their families, yet I wasn’t even sure how to form the words.

GETTING UNCOMFORTABLE ANSWERS ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE

Those gut-wrenching “something is wrong here” sensations continued, building up as my home life became increasingly scary and unpredictable. Ultimately, my privilege gave me the opportunity to understand my privilege. The private high school I went to effectively prepared me to attend a state college. My intention was to become a wildlife biologist. Barely a semester into college, that plan began to unravel. Too many questions went unanswered. My first sociology class was like a gateway drug. I needed to understand and Ethnic Studies made the most sense of the world. Native American Studies, Ethnic Studies including Black, Latinx and Asian-American Studies and Women’s Studies arose out of demands for higher education to prioritize the knowledge and experiences within these communities. What I learned was shocking, disorienting and powerful. Coming to terms with having been lied to all your life is overwhelming. Where to direct all the anger, sadness and guilt? Part of my answer was--and is-- to stay committed to understanding, reflecting and acting.

WHY RACE WAS INVENTED

In their pivotal text Racial Formation in the United States, Omi and Winant stress that “the emergence of a modern conception of race does not occur until the rise of Europe and the arrival of Europeans in the Americas” (2, p.61). When power-hungry European businessmen  came into contact with indigenous civilizations, they found a way to justify mass murder by religious doctrine. Later, when conditions in the United States changed, “European colonial powers established “white” as a legal concept in 1676 after Bacon’s Rebellion, during which indentured servants of European and African descent united against the colonial elite” (3, p.125). Then the wealthy European settler-colonialists gave “white” servants privileges, like land, access to guns and the ability to form militias, effectively squashing the possibility of overthrowing them. Laws made by the wealthy for the wealthy changed the once shared conditions of people from different geographic locations (4). Hence, race is an ever-changing category, created to maintain wealth and power for social, political and economic purposes, enshrined in every aspect of society.

UNDERSTANDING THE SMOG OF CULTURAL RACISM

As Beverly Daniel Tatum explains in her book Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (5), “cultural racism” is a part of our collective experience because it is “like smog in the air.”  This smog is made up of “the cultural images and messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites and the assumed inferiority of people of color” (p.6). Dr. Daniel Tatum offers countless examples of the ways in which these unspoken and direct messages, from very early in life, shape identity development. In other words, the smog of cultural racism creates the conditions of how we understand ourselves and one another.

TAKING IT PERSONAL: REFLECTIONS TO CONSIDER

How have you noticed the social/political/economic categories of race shift in your lifetime?

What does the “smog” represent to you?

How does the smog of cultural racism show up in your life?

What does it mean to be aware of white supremacy culture?

There are no swift solutions to doing the work of acknowledging privilege. It is an engaged process of openness to unknown and uncomfortable experiences. Over and over, mistakes will be made. What do you need to keep going?

In my client-centered work, I strive to maintain an awareness and respect for personal experiences and intersectional identities. I believe healing happens in powerful community action and when we invite ourselves to be fully honest and aware.

by Ashley Gregory, LMFT

[paralleljulieverse]

Julie Andrews Fantasy LPs #9

Super-cool-Dame-Julie-sings-the-punk-songs-of-Sid-Vicious! Even though the sound of it is something quite suspicious, If you play it loud enough you’ll always sound seditious, Super-cool-Dame-Julie-sings-the-punk-songs-of-Sid-Vicious! Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle oi! Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle oi!

                           ____________________________________

When Julie Andrews was honoured with a Special Lifetime Achievement Award at the 53rd Annual Grammys in 2011, media reports took considerable delight in the incongruous sight of the genteel Dame alongside fellow honorees, pioneering US punk band, The Ramones. Photos of Julie sandwiched between Tommy and Marky Ramone, the latter draping his bared, tattooed arm proudly around her shoulder, featured in online and print news stories around the world with commentaries typically drawing amused attention to the “diversity” of the year’s honorees.

Despite the apparent novelty of the odd juxtaposition of “Mary Poppins” and a hardcore punk rock band whose catalogue of hits include numbers like “I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”and “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment,” there is in fact something of a history of associations between Julie and punk rock.

One of the earliest recorded instances is a parody piece from 1980 by British comedian Mel Smith, made in collaboration with Queen drummer, Roger Taylor. Titled “Mel Smith’s Greatest Hits”, the song is a comic pastiche of the angry male punk anthems of the time with Smith growling about wanting to “jump up and down to my favourite sound...Julie Andrews Greatest Hits.” Elsewhere in the song, he snarls:

Julie drives me frantic Cos I'm a bit of an old romantic And she sounds so nice and she's so precise I'm in paradise with me Edelweiss

Released as a 7″ single, the front sleeve featured cover art of Smith dressed in full Adam Ant-style punk regalia, striking an air guitar pose in the middle of a bedroom bedecked with Julie Andrews memorabilia. The rear sleeve had a similar shot of Smith drooling in mock-lasciviousness over a poster of a beatifically smiling Julie. While clearly tongue-in-cheek, the Smith song signalled an irreverent collocation of Julie and punk culture that would find other, more authentic, expressions as well.

Indeed, in the very same year of 1980, a post-punk experimental outfit “The 49 Americans” released a self-titled EP with a brief track called, simply, “Julie Andrews (A Tribute)” (1980). Engineered by Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, “The 49 Americans” was a collaborative group that developed out of the London Musicians Collective in Camden (Reynolds, 187-188). Inspired by the DIY experimentalism of punk, the group placed a premium on unregulated improvisation with an open, fluid membership and a single rule that players had to swap instruments -- which could be anything from a piano to saucepan lids -- from number to number with the result that they’d often be performing with little or no technical proficiency. The “Julie Andrews” track was allegedly inspired after the group spent an evening watching tapes of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and consists of a discordant version of “Do Re Mi” played on a children’s xylophone with non-verbal vocals, (Masters, 112). It was re-released as part of the group’s debut 1982 LP,  “Too Young To Be Ideal”, which was honoured in The Wire magazine’s list of “100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)” (Barker et al, 1998).

Other examples of Julie references in punk rock include: “Topless Mary Poppins”, recorded in 2004 by London-based Celtic punk group, Neck; the summarily titled “Julie Andrews” by the Liverpool pop-punk outfit, The Down and Outs, released as a limited run single in 2007; and, most recently, a 2017 release also called “Julie Andrews” by Noose, a self-described four piece rock punk band from Nottingham. Sporting lyrics like, “I wished my baby was like the girlies in the porno movies, But it turns out she was just like Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music,” these songs turn on a kind of shock tactic of mixing the sacred and the profane, arguably something of a stylistic signature of punk. 

Dick Hebdige (1979) famously theorises punk as a “revolting style” whose subcultural disaffection was expressed through a spectacular “bricolage” of appropriated cultural “signs” (106-112). The disordered cacophony of punk music or the riotous mish-mash of punk fashion effect a representational rebellion of “semantic disorder,” he asserts, wherein categorical boundaries are dissolved and ordinarily discrete elements are thrown together in perverse combinations that contravene received “rules” of taste and decency (90). Like a portrait of the Queen with a safety pin through her lip, the family-friendly wholesomeness of Julie Andrews was a resonant symbol of mainstream culture ripe for punk subversion.

There is however another, possibly more interesting, reading of punk’s incorporation of Julie Andrews as other than a simple target for  anti-establishment iconoclasm. In a fascinating article, Ruth Adams (2008) argues for punk, at least in its influential British forms, as part of a long history of populist English cultural dissent. In punk, she writes,“[b]its and pieces of both officially sanctioned and popular English culture, of politics and history were brought together in a chaotic, uneasy admixture...that arguably spot lit the very institutions that it nominally sought to destroy” (469-70). The Sex Pistols, in particular, are interpreted by Adams as “inheritors of the English music hall tradition -- the heirs to the crowns of Arthur Askey and Max Wall, operating outside the ‘legitimate theatre’ and characterized by clownish outfits, silly walks, smutty jokes and cocking a snook at the Establishment” (470).

Far from seeing them as antithetical opposites, this reading places punk and Julie Andrews on something of an artistic continuum -- albeit at divergent extremes -- with both drawing performative and professional energies from the riotous traditions of popular English carnivalesque and working-class musical theatre. Indeed, it’s instructive that the two music hall comics cited by Adams as historical precedents for the Sex Pistols -- Arthur Askey and Max Wall -- actually performed alongside Julie during her long juvenile career on the British variety circuit (Andrews, 150-51). Even after she made the leap to “legit” theatre and Hollywood stardom, the topsy-turvy irreverence of music hall continued to form an integral part of her oeuvre and persona, as evidenced from My Fair Lady to STAR! to Victor/Victoria, from Heartrending Ballads and Raucous Ditties to The Julie Andrews Hour to Julie and Dick at Covent Garden.

It’s possibly for this reason that, alongside the more predictable deployments of Julie as object of punk’s anarchic negationism, she also features as a subject of acknowledged admiration, even inspiration. This seems particularly true of female punk artists, many of whom regularly cite Julie as an important influence. Gina Birch, founding member of post-punk British band, The Raincoats, singles out Julie as a major formative inspiration (Reddington, 27), as does Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill (Juno, 89). In her memoir, Laurie Lindeen (2007), lead vocalist for 1990s grrl punk band, Zuzu’s Petals, even jokes:

“‘What women have influenced you?’ is a very broad question that we are asked every day. We yawn the usual: ‘Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Deborah Harry, and Exene,’ when I should say, “Louisa May Alcott, Julie Andrews, and Carly Simon’” (202)

Pop superstar, Gwen Stefani, who rose to fame as lead singer of ska-punk band, No Doubt, makes no bones about her lifelong adoration of Julie Andrews. She loudly proclaims The Sound of Music as “her one true love” and is said to have cried with joy when Julie granted permission for her to riff vocals from “The Lonely Goatherd” for the 2007 hit single, “Wind It Up” (Apter, 27). Another current pop superstar, Lady Gaga -- who though not directly punk certainly draws heavily from traditions of punk rock -- is equally fulsome in her enthusiasm for Julie, as profiled in an earlier post here in the Parallel Julieverse.

All of which ultimately suggests that this imaginary LP of Julie singing the songs of the Sex Pistols is possibly not as far-fetched as it might at first seem! Oi!

Sources:

Adams, Ruth, 'The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia.” Popular Music and Society. 31: 4 (2008): 469–88.

Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Apter, Jeff. Gwen Stefani and No Doubt: Simple Kind of Life. London: Omnibus Press, 2007.

Barker, Steve et al. “100 Records That Set The World On Fire (While No One Was Listening).” The Wire. 175, September 1998: 22-40.

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.

Juno, Andrea, ed. Angry Women in Rock, Vol. 1. San Francisco: Juno Books: 1996.

Lindeen, Laurie. Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.

Reddington, Helen. The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era. London: Ashgate, 2007.

Reynold, Simon. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Faber and Faber, 2009.

© 2017, Brett Farmer. All Rights Reserved

[travelivery]

Today marked the official groundbreaking for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Co-Founders George Lucas and Mellody Hobson along with the Museum’s Board of Directors joined Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price and a group of more than 100 civic and community leaders to break ground on this 21st century cultural destination to be located at Exposition Park in South Los Angeles.

Check Out the Photo Gallery Below

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Ground Breaking

“The focus of the Museum is to open up people’s imaginations and inspire them to dream beyond what is considered possible,” said co-founder George Lucas. “Narrative art and storytelling stirs our emotions, shapes our aspirations as a society, and is the glue that binds us together around our common beliefs.”

The Lucas Museum will celebrate the art of visual storytelling and enable people of diverse backgrounds to experience the power of narrative art across all mediums, including painting, illustration, comic art, photography, film, animation and digital art. It is intended to be a place where visitors feel comfortable and welcomed by engaging with art forms they may already recognize and love.

“Our goal is to create the world’s most inclusive and accessible art museum—a place that brings together people from every walk of life,” said co-founder Mellody Hobson. “We are excited to call Exposition Park home, surrounded by more than 100 elementary and high schools, one of the country’s leading universities, as well as three other world-class museums.”

With an iconic building designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, the 300,000 square-foot non-profit museum will feature collection galleries and exhibition spaces displaying original works of art from world-renowned artists, cutting-edge digital technologies and daily film screenings in two state-of-the-art theaters. It will also offer extraordinary educational opportunities with hands-on and digital classrooms and a free public research library for educators, scholars, and students. Education will be a centerpiece of the Museum’s programming to provide diverse students of all ages the skills to voice their own stories and spark creativity.

The project will transform a series of asphalt parking lots into a museum surrounded by 11 acres of new park land and gardens designed by Los Angeles-based landscape architecture firm Studio-MLA. Thousands of jobs will be created directly and indirectly as a result of the Museum.

“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be an architectural wonder, a cultural treasure, and a center of storytelling and creativity at the heart of a reimagined Exposition Park,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “I thank Mellody Hobson and George Lucas for their incredible generosity and vision, which will inspire countless Angelenos and visitors from around the world.”

“Today is a momentous occasion, as we break ground on what will surely become one of Los Angeles County’s most popular and beloved landmarks,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. “The Lucas Museum will not only display brilliant works of art, but also teach countless children the science and technological skills needed for careers in the film, animation and design industries. It will cement Exposition Park‘s reputation as a world-class destination for arts and entertainment.”

“My heartfelt thanks to George and Mellody for this unprecedented investment in South Los Angeles,” said Los Angeles Councilmember Curren Price. “When completed, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be a special, very magical gathering space for individuals from all walks of life to experience art like never before. We share an absolute belief that all children and families, no matter their skin color or zip code, deserve equal access to the arts.”

Construction is commencing immediately and is anticipated to be completed by late 2021.

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Ground Breaking

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Ground Breaking

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Location

About Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Narrative art is art that tells a story through images, either as a single moment in an ongoing story or as a sequence of events unfolding over time. It is as old as humanity, with many of the world’s great works of art being narrative in nature, conveying stories from religion, myth, legend, history, literature or current events. While storytelling takes many forms, narrative imagery and pictures may have preceded the written word in capturing the thoughts and actions of people. Storytelling is central to the history of visual art across nearly every culture and time period in human history – ranging from cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphics to religious paintings and now to the modern use of film and digital animation. The power of narrative art is in bringing people or societies together or inspiring us to action, through shared beliefs.

The Lucas Museum will showcase how storytelling works in various art forms and various times and places. The Museum will assemble many different genres including comic art, painting, illustration, photography, filmmaking, and drawings for exploration and celebration. These works of vastly different types of art will coexist in the galleries for comparison, contemplation, inspiration and discussion.

For more information, please visit www.lucasmuseum.org

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Officially Breaks Ground Today marked the official groundbreaking for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Co-Founders George Lucas and Mellody Hobson along with the Museum’s Board of Directors joined Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price and a group of more than 100 civic and community leaders to break ground on this 21st century cultural destination to be located at Exposition Park in South Los Angeles.